


Breathe

by sunflowerspaceman



Series: Sympathy for the Devil [5]
Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types
Genre: God this guy got fucked up while he was gone, M/M, Tord is finally having a breakdown, some violence, tom doesn’t actually die but you know that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-12 02:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12949107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerspaceman/pseuds/sunflowerspaceman
Summary: The End was hard for Tord too.





	Breathe

Tord could barely breathe.

Fool that he was, he didn’t tear out his own heart the day he resolved to take on this mission.

Everything was too good, too safe, too familiar.

Tord couldn’t breathe.

Everything was familiar but wrong, wrong, WRONG, because Tom wasn’t here, and that was a necessity, because Tom knew him better than anyone and Tom would be able to see through the long years of lies and hiding and he couldn’t have that. So he drove him out (and he ignored that screaming voice in his head that told him ‘no, don’t,’ but he wished he hadn’t now because he still loved Tom with every fiber of his being and those feelings came rushing back the minute he set eyes on him once more).

Tord didn’t sleep those first few nights. A few times he caught himself thinking of this as his home again, and he couldn’t, he couldn’t do that, he had an army to run, and so home was nowhere anymore.

Tord couldn’t breathe.

He held his breath when Edd hugged him. When he was cooking, just like he had back in the day. At night, when he was working on the robot. He held his breath until he couldn’t anymore, and he counted down the days till he’d be gone all over again.

He was a ghost.

It was his last day.

He held his breath and slunk away from his friends (former friends, he reminded himself, he couldn’t get attached again, that would only hurt him). Fingertips traced over the picture of himself from eight years ago, and he felt his heart skip a beat upon realizing Tom had kept it all these years, and shook it off and ripped the frame away from the wall and let it crash to the ground.

He pulled the lever harder than he’d probably meant to and his lab was revealed, clean and sterile and shining, and he pretended he ignored the photo of himself and his friends he’d had up.

“At last...I will be complete again.”

He didn’t feel that way.

His hand hovered over the red button and he laughed, empty and humorless and cold. The him of eight years ago wouldn’t even have considered betraying his friends like this.

“Hey Tord!”

Fuck.

“Ah, oh, hello Edd! Uh, th-this is just my old, uhhhh—laundry room!” That was a terrible lie and Tord knew it, and fuck, what was wrong with him, he’d lied his way out of worse situations.

“Oookay.” Tord relaxed for a moment, but he’d forgotten his friends’ natural curiosity and their propensity for doing absolutely idiotic things in the name of that, and the house defense system he’d installed when he was 20 and delirious from sleep deprivation and moldy coffee got activated, and everything was happening at once and fuck, fuck, it was overwhelming and panic started to take hold when he saw Matt stretching towards the button for the robot.

The him of eight years ago would never have laid a hand on Matt.

But here he was, with bruised knuckles and Matt dragged up by his hoodie, bruises forming around his eye, and Tord was finding it hard to breathe again.

Everything was going wrong.

“Tord?” Edd sounded a little frightened.

Tord pretended to regain his composure. Calm was a mask he’d learned to wear over the years, and it slipped on easily now.

“Wow, what a mess. Who wants to go out for ice cream?” He needed a distraction, a better one this time.

“Um…me?” It broke his heart to hear how feeble and small Matt sounded, but he kept a smile on his face anyway.

“That’s the spirit! Who’s my brave soldier?” (Years from then, Tord would remember that statement with a sick feeling of guilt festering in his stomach as he watched Matt on a hospital bed being put back together with metal in place of flesh and bone, a brave soldier indeed) He looked back at Edd, swallowing the nervousness in his throat. “Edd, you coming?”

“...yeah. Sure.”

The walk to the store was silent. Tord didn’t explain himself, nor did the others ask for an explanation. It stayed that way until he managed to slip away. He needed to get this over and done with, he had to.

When he got back, the house was silent except for the sounds of him working. It was almost soothing. Silence was a rare thing, had been for years now. He had almost stopped panicking when the sound of his bedroom door being broken down sent him over the edge again, and he could barely process what was being said to him, but he let the instincts from years upon years of twisting and manipulating and killing take over and fuck fuck fuck that was Tom, Tom had found out the sort of person he’d become.

His fist slammed down on the button and he barely even realized it until he was falling into the cockpit of his robot. He was running on autopilot, panic and megalomania and eight years of loneliness and anger mixed together in a cocktail of toxicity and exploded into carnage and frenzied laughter and that persona he’d constructed for himself, the one who’d done horrific things and justified them with a cause, taking control. And how _stupid_ was Edd, how naive, to think all these years later he’d still need _friends_?

“TORD, NO!”

He couldn’t breathe.

Tom.

He’d killed—

Nonononono—

He’d killed Tom.

He tried to flee (nononono he was gone tom was gone and it was his fault he was a killer he’d killed him—) but Matt, then Edd had gotten his hands on the controls. He could feel bruises forming from the metal fists making slamming into his flesh. By the time he managed to destroy the controls his eye was swelling shut and his mind was fogged over with fear and grief. He was barely aware of his own words.

“So long, old friends!”

Hearing Tom’s voice again was the last bit of relief he would get for months. 

And then he couldn’t breathe.


End file.
